


B. Rosen and C. Shurley Are Dead

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Gen, LGBTQ Character, Trans Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:39:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU based on the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Chuck and Becky are summoned by the angels to inquire after the transformation of Castiel. Very, very background Dean/Cas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	B. Rosen and C. Shurley Are Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Cast: 
> 
> Rosencrantz: Becky Rosen  
> Guildenstern: Chuck Shurley  
> The Player: Death  
> Alfred: Adam  
> Tragedians: Ruby and Casey  
> Hamlet: Castiel/Godstiel  
> Ophelia: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester  
> Claudius and Gertrude: Raphael and Michael  
> Polonius: John Winchester
> 
> (additional warnings for gratuitous self-indulgent meta)
> 
> ((please inform me if I have marginalized anyone--I apologize, and will fix it immediately))

Somewhere in Kansas, a road, pitted with holes and littered with the skeletons of large animals and small vermin, stretches through plains smudged green and brown from drought. In the car, there are two individuals.

One drives, his wrist draped over the wheel. He has scruff over his cheeks and reaching down his jaw. His adam’s apple bobs up and down, as if he wants to speak but he hiccoughs back the words. Between his thighs, he grips a thermos of cold coffee (cinnamon-flavored creamer, splenda, and two shots of expresso). He’s wearing thread bare flannel pajamas and a badly faded bath robe with tattered slippers on his feet.

He is Chuck Shirley.

Beside him, a pile of French fries rest in a thick paperish container. He wonders if he should be concerned about the way the car runs over bumps and ruts in the world, jostling the fried goods towards the gear-shift. There are grease smudges lining up the shaft of the stick.

Sometimes his eyes slide to the person in the seat next to him.

She’s slouched in her seat, sneakers kicked off. Her socks are wildly striped, gloving her toes in clashing colors of the rainbow. Her feet are on the dash, her toes splayed across the windshield. Her knees knock together to form a desk, over which is propped a massive book written in something that is definitely recognizable as English but yet strangely incomprehensible. Her iTouch and assorted cords serve as bookmarks. Her skirt, plaid and pleated, falls over the v of her legs, weighted down with a thermos of cold coffee (black, like Captain Janeway). 

She is Becky Rosen.

She doesn’t turn the pages of the book, instead focusing on flipping a single coin, calling out  _heads_  when she looks at its silver face in her palm. She takes a fry for each proclamation of heads.

This time, she keeps her fist closed. “Chuck.”

“Tails.”

Becky closes her eyes, presses a palm to her forehead, and groans.

“There’s always a chance,” Chuck says.  “Does the law of probability have no meaning to you?”

“At this rate, there aren’t going to be any French fries left for you.”

“Tails.”

“Heads.” Becky takes another fry, flips the coin again—

“—Heads,” Chuck says, hurriedly.

Becky hums, so Chuck takes a fry, bites it in half.  “They’re cold. And we have no ketchup.”

“You ate it all,” Becky says. “I think.”

She flips the coin again. “Heads.” She takes mercy on Chuck, chooses not to take a fry even though she predicted correctly. “Heads.” She bites a fry in half, gives the other half to Chuck.

“Gee, thanks.” He chews with his mouth open, licks the fried crumbs from his beard. “You don’t ever wonder, why?”

Becky cranks the window down, sticks her foot out, waggles her toes in the breeze. “You’re worried about the Law of Probability in the face of the apocalypse, brimstone flavored?”

Chuck slams his hand against the steering wheel. “It’s about faith, Becky. Faith in principalities.”

“Principles, you mean.” Becky sticks a fry onto each of her canines. “Look. I am the walrus.” She flips the coin again. Looks at Chuck.

“Heads.”

She feeds him the last fry, flips the coin – “heads” – a few more times.  “This is getting boring.” She leans towards Chuck. “This side is tails, right?”

“Yes,” Chuck says, flicking his eyes off the road. “I find myself to be in suspense. Will the law of probability once more assert itself? Will the coin land on heads?” He takes the coin from Becky, flips it, and she catches it.

“Heads.”

“Fuck,” Chuck says. He flexes his fingers around the wheel. “It was still a fifty-fifty shot.”

“Eighty-five now,” Becky says.

Their tires spit gravel. “Where are we going?”

Becky yawns, stretches. The book falls over against her chest, pages wrinkling. “Don’t you remember?”

Chuck pries the coin from her fingers, flips it again. Hands it to Becky. “Heads.”

“This must be it.” Chuck knows that his voice is too high, too strained, vocal chords strung too tight. “It’s happened already.”

“What has?”

“The apocalypse.” He rubs the sweat off his forehead. “I should have expected this. How else do you explain it?” He doesn’t give Becky time to respond. “There are possible explanations: one—I’m willing it. I’m not actually here, in this car. I am actually a God and there are no such people as Dean and Sam Winchester and no such things as angels or an apocalypse. I am a god driven in circles regarding the state of his creation, caught in an eddying whirl of edits and distraction.”

“You’re not a god, Chuck, you’re a prophet.”

“What if you’re the prophet? What if I’m just a writer?” He shakes his head. “We’re caught in a bubble, a time bubble. There is no time.”

“With no time,” Becky says, “there can be no apocalypse.”

Chuck takes his foot off the gas, lets the car coast. “What do you remember?”

“Lots of things.” She looks down at her book, traces the print that has her name stamped on the cover. She frowns, pries the book from her chest, flips the pages, turns it from upside down to the other side then back again because she does not recognize which way is up. She closes the book, puts it under her seat.

“The first thing.”

“I don’t know, Chuck. It was a long time ago.”  Her feet slip off the dash.

“The first thing that happened today, then.”

“I woke up—“

“—A messenger—“

They say it together.

“We were sent for,” Becky says, slowly.

“A messenger.”

Becky blinks her eyes. “That’s nothing to write home about. You’re a messenger of god yourself—“

“—no you—“

“So maybe it’s like Messengers United. A convention.”

Chuck guns the gas again, eases the car back onto the road. “We the messengers were told by a messenger not to come too late.”

“Maybe we weren’t even summoned by a messenger,” Becky says. “Perhaps we only dreamed that we were.”

“We can’t be giving ourselves messages,” Chuck says, his voice high. “It said that we mustn’t come too late—but too late for what?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t gotten there yet.”

“I don’t know where we are,” Chuck says as they near a crossroads.

Becky looks for a map, but the glove box is empty. Out of the corner of her eye, an animal – grey, white? – with a horn protruding from its head leaps from the side of the road. Chuck slams down on the brake, the car tail-sliding, wheels spinning against the loose gravel.

“What the fuck was that?” Chuck says, his voice cracked.

“I thought I saw a unicorn.” She rubs her eyes with the palm of her hand. “But it couldn’t have been.”

“We live in an age of demons and angels.”

“Perhaps a deer,” Becky says, craning her neck around.

“Perhaps a horse with an arrow in its forehead mistaken to be a deer,” Chuck says.

“Or a unicorn.”

They sit in the car, collect their breaths and their scattered heart beats.

“We could find it,” Becky says. “Did you see where it went?”

Chuck nods, pulls the car down the left hand turn. “It would be nice if it were a unicorn, wouldn’t it?”

Becky’s eyes flash, and she sits straighter in her seat, the hems of her skirt gathered in her fingers, all her teeth flashing in the sun.

They don’t go very far when they find a sleek white cadilac broken down on the road, hood up and smoking. An old man peers at the engine, stripped to just his pinstriped trousers, a white undershirt, and suspenders looped off his shoulders and dangling along his thighs. A cane leans against the car beside him.

A young man with hair chopped short and uneven is splayed along the top of the car, chewing a blade of grass. He’s almost naked except for his white binder and the swimsuit trunks slipping off his hips. His name is Adam.

Two women play a game of cards in the strip between road proper and fields while bubble gum pop blares from the stereo.

“You okay?” Chuck says, slowing the car to a stop, head hanging out the window. He turns his music off so that it won’t clash with theirs.

“Are you?” the man replies. He slinks closer, rubbing his greasy hands on his nice trousers. “Have you come to see the show?”

“Er.”

Adam rolls off the car, stuffs his hands in his pockets, saunters closer, muscles lazy and tight in the sunlight. The women abandon their game and also approach. The wind shuffles their cards through the fields.

Becky thinks she sees an ace of diamonds drift and scuttle along the highway.

“We’re actors,” one of the women says. Her voice is thick and breathy like smoke. Her blonde hair and leather jacket are bright in the sun.

“Back off, Ruby,” the other says, dragging her ringed fingers through her long brown hair.

“But why, Casey” she says as she approaches Becky’s side of the car, propping her elbows on the rolled down window’s edge. She licks her lips, and Becky can’t stop looking at the way her mouth shapes her words.

“What do you do,” Becky says.

Ruby leans closer. “Anything you can imagine and more.”

“Let your imaginations run riot,” the man says, slipping his braces back on over his shoulders. “We are beyond surprise.”

“How much,” Becky says.

Ruby edges back, but her hips cant toward Becky. “We don’t mind giving private performances.”

Casey laughs. “We have a saying—“

“Audiences are voyeurs,” Ruby says, dropping a wink that makes Becky’s insides go flush and warm.

Chuck wrenches his car door open, forgets to undo his seat belt when he tries to stumble out, nearly choking himself in the progress. After struggling with that and then accidentally blaring the horn with his elbow, he staggers towards the three of them. “But where are you going where you have you been what are you doing?” he says. “What sort of people just put on an impromptu performance?”

“We do,” Adam says. He takes a rolled up sheaf of papers from behind the waist of his trunks. “The latest from the pseudonymatic self-styled prophets of the lord, Gamble and Edlund,  _Season Seven, Time For A Wedding_.”

Becky and Chuck jerk towards each other. “Did you,” they ask each other. “No, did you?”

The old man raises his brow, opens a bag of fried pickle chips. “Are either of you prophets of the lord?”

“This one,” they say, pointing at each other.

“Give me that,” Chuck says, holding his hand out for the paper from Adam, who obliges.

The pages are scrawled with red. “I’ve taken the liberty,” Adam says.

“You must have written this,” Becky says over Chuck’s shoulder. “I would never write such a horror.”

“And you think I would?” His voice is pitched half an octave higher.

“We all have bad days,” the man says.

Adam nods, sympathetic. Casey rolls her eyes, goes back to the car, gets grease on her hands and her cheeks.

“This is not the word of God.” Becky tears the pages in half.

“Whoever said it was?” the man says, laughing.

Becky bites down on her words, seethes.

“How did you find this?” Chuck says crushing the ribbons of paper in his hands into a wad. “Who would use our names like this?”

“The same way you chanced upon us, more than likely,” the man says, eyes narrow and sly, almost winking as he crunches down on fried chips.  “Or fate.” He runs his tongue over his teeth.

Becky bursts into sharp laughter. “Fate. We’re on Team Free Will okay.”

“We have no control,” the man says. “We could not control our car—a non-sentient being with no sense of will—from breaking down. We could not control our encounter with you. We cannot control the people who see us perform tonight. Tonight we play for those in the hotel because we are hungry and we need to keep the clothes on our back. Tomorrow we die. Or the day after. Or soon.”

Chuck runs his finger through his hair, makes the thick curls stand up on end. “All times are soon.”

“How marvelous,” the man says.

Adam has picked up the bits of paper, stuffs them into the pockets of his swim trunks, his toes wriggling in the dirt and dust. “Dying is healthy.”

“Fate isn’t though,” Becky says.

Adam ducks into a summersault comes up with his arms out, bits of grass and dead weeds sticking to his binder. “Fate is a safety-net.”

“An apathy-net you mean,” Becky says, breath smoldering in her nostrils, hands clenched into trembling fists at her sides. She’s shoved her feet into her sneakers, but they’re in crooked and wrong, collapsing the leather walls of the shoes inwards. She holds her arms and elbows at crooked awkward positions, humming deep in her throat. “Oh look at me. I can’t help myself. I’m just a pre-programmed robot!”

“All the world’s a stage,” Ruby says. “We all have our parts to play.”

“And free will is an illusion,” Adam says. “It’s all been scripted before.”

“And you like having garbage in your mouths?” Becky points at Adam’s bulging pockets of a rubbish script she has no recall of writing and certainly not the word of god. “You like that rhetoric making you bleed?”

“That’s what rhetoric does,” Adam says. “They make you bleed. It’s in the blood.” He leans in close to Becky, his breath glazing the shell of her ear with damp breath. “Just say yes.”

Casey gets the car started, it sputters to life, the tail-pipe kicking out smoke. “Let’s go,” she says.

“Wait,” says Chuck. “What do you do when you aren’t performing work unlawfully attached to our eponyms?”

The old man swings his cane between his fingers. “Tragedy, sir. Deaths and disclosures—the family business.” He shrugs into his overcoat, clicks his teeth, points his finger at them both. “See you later.”

Becky and Chuck turn towards each other. “The fuck?”

They get back into the car. They drive up the road until they find a hotel. As they get out, they catch a glimpse of a white-tailed creature disappearing into the brush. They look at each other.

“Deer—“

“Unicorn—“

Chuck licks his lip in frustration. After dragging her book from under the seat, Becky climbs the steps to the hotel foyer two at a time until her breath scuds against her sternum.

Raphael and Michael wait for them. They go to them with their arms outstretched. “Welcome—“

“Becky’s the prophet,” Chuck says tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Becky shrugs her shoulder, guzzles down the rest of her cold coffee. There is not enough caffeine in the world to deal with this shit.

“Thank you for heeding our summons,” Raphael says.

“Do you think we had a choice?” Chuck says.

Becky trods on his foot. “Rhetorical question.”

“We are much disturbed by the change in our sibling Castiel,” Raphael continues. “They are much changed in their demeanor since the absence of our father has come to light.”

Becky and Chuck side-eye each other.

“We beseech you to draw them into your company, into your little pleasures, so that we might know what troubles them, and ease their disquietude.”

Chuck dips his hand underneath his discolored tank top, and Becky knows he’s scratching at his binder, eyes to the floor.

“We will thank you,” Michael says, “with remembrance as befitting a god for when our father returns. We are all god’s children. Sparrows in his palm.”

“Alright. Fine,” Chuck says.

Becky sees John Winchester lurking in the shadows, an unsheathed dagger in his hands. The archangels go to him, and they leave together. “I want to go home,” Becky says. She hates how her voice sounds thread-bare thin.

“Angels,” Chuck says, pressing his fist against his mouth. “Have you seen what they do? What they can do? What they’re going to do?”

Becky coughs, flaps her wrists in an attempt to steady the butterflies batting around her ribcage. “It’s all over my depth because what do you say to an angel? Burn our eyes—“

“—I’ll get you home and –“

“—out of our heads—“

Chucks hands, shaking now—“dry you high and –“

Becky clings with both arms to her book.  “What does this say?”

“What?” But Chuck is distracted. “Too many questions!”

“We need to find the answer—“

“There are no answers!”

“There are,” says Becky, sullen. “You know that there is an answer about who we are and what this book is and who’s it by and who wrote that atrocity and if god really speaks to the prophets—“

“You’re the prophet,” Chuck says. “I write pulp fiction novels.”

“I’m samlicker81.  I write fanfiction.”

“But you turn a phrase quite well,” Chuck says.

Becky thrusts the book under his face, dragging her finger under the place where her name is stamped in silver filigree. “This is nonsense!” She wrenches the book open, wrinkles the pages, but the words written therein are unrecognizable.

“Give us this day our daily mask,” Chuck says and Becky hates that she can’t tell if he’s making fun of her or praying or what.

“Summons,” she says, slamming the book closed, pressing it her chest. “We are not marionettes.” She raises her head to the ceiling. “We don’t owe you anything! We don’t owe anything to anyone.”

“Ever tell you what happened the first time I saw Raphael,” Chuck says.

“I read about it. It was in the fantasy section at the public library. In my fix-it fic, orgasms happened instead.”

They look at each other.

“It’s nice that Castiel is no longer a chunk of molar in your hair,” Becky says.

Chuck nods, chin pulled tight to his collarbone.  “They are changed. Transformed.”

“There and back again. One could say.”

“When I met Castiel,” Chuck says.

“They were a fan of your work. Like me.”

“And then they exploded.”

“But then they got better,” Becky says, teeth flashing.

Chuck clasps his hands against his belly, right over the knot in his bathrobe. Shuffles his feet, slippers all scuffed to hell, against the floor. There’s a flash of pale sky-blue boxers. “What do you think it means to be remembered by god?”

“Eternity.”

“In paradise?” and he looks a little brighter because of hope in the middle of an apocalypse.

“Or hell.”

They shiver, look over their shoulders.

“I need to practice,” Becky says. “Castiel was my favorite. Is my favorite.”

Chuck whirls around, finger out and accusing. “I thought that Sam was your favorite.”

Becky shushes him. “They’re all my favorites. But sometimes I get too excited to speak properly. Let’s play questions, since I expect we’ll be asking a lot of them.”

“What if Cas isn’t Cas?” Chuck presses his palms against his forehead.

“I don’t know—“

“Statement!” Chuck cries, and he almost claps his hands together.

Becky sets her jaw, smolders and seethes.

“Have you heard the rumors?” Chuck says.

“The ones about Castiel swallowing down the souls of purgatory?”

“You think that might have something to do with their transformation?”

“Are you saying that Castiel is suffering the fate of one possessing too much hubris?”

Chuck plants his hands on his bent knees, breathes deep. “He was trying to save the world!”

“Ha! Ejaculation!”

“Couldn’t you just say statement?”

“No—“ Becky holds out her hand, and Chuck takes a moment to snicker at her expense.

“What are we supposed to say to an engorged angel who thinks themself a god?” Chuck says.

“You think Castiel will have their own prophets?” Becky picks at her nails.

“So when that person writes, thus saith the lord glory hallelujah, and you preface yours with the same thing only the two prophecies are in conflict, what happens then?”

“Are you saying that you aren’t the prophet Chuck?”

Chuck spins around, hands clasped over his ears. “What in god’s name is going on!”

“Rhetoric, darling—but since you mentioned, what is god’s name?”

“Don’t you know?” Chuck says, scandalized.

“Don’t you?” Becky edges closer.

“But aren’t you the prophet?”

They circle each other.

“What does he say when you dream?”

“Do you think God should sign his dreams xoxo insert name here?”

“Do you think all prophets dream?” Becky asks because she doesn’t dream during the night or the day or the in between times, and Chuck knows this.

“Why do you think dreams are prophetic and not merely the irrational night terrors of a man who drinks too much?”

They’re close enough that their feet almost get tangled up in each Becky’s laces.

“Are you a man who drinks too much?”

“Are you a prophet of god?”

They reach for each other, they shout at each other, they gag each other with their stale French-fry breath, “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”

They cling to each other, fingers clenched in the other’s elbows.

“I think that I can’t breathe quite properly,” Chuck says. He turns his back to Becky, unbuttons his bathrobe so that she can hold it out as a curtain screen. He strips off his tank top, reaches behind and takes off the binder, letting whooshing breaths in and out.

He slides his arms into the sleeves that Becky holds out for him, her eyes squeezed shut like he asked her to. Ties himself up, pulling the terry belt nice and tight.

“Do you know what they expect of us?” he says.

“Why do you think I know anything?” Becky says.

“I suppose we should delve for details,” Chuck says. “Shall I be Castiel and shall you be –“

“Me.” Becky smooths her shirt down, runs her fingers through her hair, clears her throat. “Our father which art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Whatever it is.”

“You can call me Castiel.” Chuck says this with a small smile and they share a snuffly sort of giggle reminiscent of the times they used to live-action role play together.

“Glory be, Castiel. How are you today?”

“Well. Now I am well.”

“But you weren’t before?”

“No.”

They stare at each other again. Becky rallies. “So you’re God now?”

“As my father before me.”

“So did God die? Did I miss the memo?”

They flinch, but Chuck continues on. “You might well ask. Is abdication and abandonment like death or simply worse than death?”

Becky cracks her knuckles. “So let me get this straight. Your father was god. You were his child.” Becky chews her lips. Pauses.

Chuck looks up at her.

“Nope. I’m not following.”

“The world is a mess and I just need to rule it,” Chuck says, ignoring the way Becky’s eyes narrow at him accusingly – “because if I didn’t, then my siblings would flip the table, knock the world off, let it shatter like glass marbles on the hard floor of infinity and oblivion.”

“So you decided to pig out on some souls?”

“It wasn’t pigging out.”

“Consume some souls.”

“All the souls of purgatory. I had no power. I was just an angel. And I needed to be like my father.”

“You wanted to be God.”

“I needed to be God.”

“But you’re just an angel,” Becky says.

“We are on Team Free Will. We can be whoever we want to be.”

“Including becoming a personage who commits fratricide?”

Chuck blanches.

“Was that the royal we or just the monster souls talking?”

Chuck ruffles his shoulders.

“So to sum up,” Becky says, “Your father, whom you love, abandoned you, leaving you a world to run and no instructions. Unlike your siblings, you happened to be fond of the world and decided to save it instead of hosting an apocalypse after party. But that initiated a civil war, requiring you to slay the siblings you were trying to save with your own hand—much like the devil himself. I suppose that would make you uncomfortable.”

“Yes. I suppose that covers it.”  

Becky leans against Chuck’s shoulders. “So why are people surprised that you are transformed?”

“I can’t imagine.”

Chuck rests his head on Becky’s. “Why were we sent for?”

Becky licks her lips. “Do I look like an all-seeing prophet to you?”

“Are we still playing?”

“Do you want to?”

“Is this the end?”

Becky swallows, sighs. “Is this the end, my friend?”

“Foul. Repetition,” Chuck says very softly.  He straightens. “You hear that?”

“It sounds like thunder. Or drums.”

“The voice of God?”

They shrug at each other. They follow the sound until they find Castiel, standing by themself upon a balcony, the wind in their hair, tan trench coat fluttering around their legs, their hands thrust deep in their pocket.  Before they open their mouths to speak, Castiel says, “And how are my father’s voices?”

“We’re not actually voices,” Becky says.

“But we’re doing well,” Chuck says, elbowing Becky gently in the ribs.

Castiel does not turn around. “Becky. Isn’t that heavy?”

She glances down at the book in her arms, the book stamped with her name, scribbled with words that aren’t words she recognizes. “Sometimes.”

“I heard what my brothers said of me,” Castiel says. “And they are mistaken. I am not much transformed. I simply am.” Castiel reaches out their hand, points towards the horizon. “Look.” A cadillac, sleek and white, pulls up the road, coughing smoke.

“The players,” Chuck says.

“Is that what they told you?” Castiel turns then, their eyes too bright, their voice too much like the weight of an ocean in their ears. “Perhaps all prophets should be blind, so that they can better see. Would you like to see the face of god?”

Chuck’s throat works up and down, and then Castiel is gone, a tan speck on the road, meeting the players before the hotel gates.

“I think that went well,” Chuck says, words hesitant. “No—smiting.”

“I thought we were going to ask Castiel questions,” Becky says. “Wasn’t that the point of earlier? Perhaps we could have started with, Dear Castiel, why did you swallow the souls? That can’t possibly be good for you. Are you quite sure you haven’t got a tummy ache?”

“It would have been useless,” Chuck says. “Why do gods do anything? A useless question equivalent to self indulgent navel gazing!”

“We have nothing,” Becky says. “Other than the fact that we should embody ancient archetypes and tropes with our eyes burned out of our skulls. Honestly that is a bit cliché.”

“They can hear you,” Chuck whispers.

“I’d like to see us sneak around omniscience,” Becky shouts.

Chuck’s lips stiffen under his beard, then he takes out a pen, scribbles on his palm,  _Castiel isn’t a real god._

“How do you know?” Becky says.

_He is transformed._

“And yours might have been too but we don’t know. One or the two of us may be prophets and we don’t know. Maybe gods are made or born this way all the time.”

Chuck gasps, splutters. “Pragmatism!? You’re talking about things that you won’t find the answer to not even if it was spelled out for you.”

“I’m just saying whether you like it or not we have a god on our hands and you’re just—” Becky flutters her hand – “quibbling about abstract theoreticals with unsupported premises.”

Chuck palms his face, leans over the balcony, robe fluttering around his knees.

“I heard a story once—about a philosopher who dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure if he wasn’t a butterfly dreaming he was a philosopher.”

“And so?”

“God should not speak in dreams,” Chuck says, burying his hands in his forehead. “I just wanted to be a writer.”

“Can’t you be both?” Becky takes out her coin, flips it. “Why does it have to be one or the other?”

“Because this isn’t writing. It’s—it’s word vomit.” Chuck’s eyes drift towards Becky’s closed hand. “What was it?”

“What?”

“Heads or tails?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Becky says, spinning it again.

Chuck scowls at her. Then, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I’m not going to think about it.”

“Being here. We’re burning our bridges because we can’t ever go back, can we?”

Becky puts the coin back in her pocket, opens her book, breathes in deep from the spine. “Hmm,” she says.

“We’ve got nothing to show for being here,” Chuck says, his voice high. “All we’ve got is blood guts in our hair and ruined reputations and mandatoriums about not publishing anymore books. I mean prophecies. I mean. And all we’ve got for all this a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered.”

“The world hasn’t burned,” Becky says.

“It will,” Chuck says.   

“Thus saith the lord.”

Castiel returns with a retinue of players in tow. “They have agreed to perform a little play slightly revised by me,” Castiel says. They stop, catch the old man with one suspender looped over his shoulder, the other dangling by his thigh with a piercing eye. “Because even Death has a part to play.”

“I had no idea, Castiel, mutated angel, that you were fond of the charade.”

Castiel says nothing, just tilts their jaw upwards, their mouth a small smile.

Becky shivers, and Chuck gives her his told-you-so look. Then Castiel is gone, and Becky realizes they are alone in the same hotel with Death.

“So you’ve caught up?” Chuck says, a little too scathingly Becky thinks.

“Have you?” Death says.

Becky steps on Chuck’s foot.

“Pride a little wounded, perhaps?” Death says. “Prophets of god, prophets of a god who has fallen out of favor, would-be-wanna-be-writers in a better time.” He spreads his arms. “And yet here we are, a better time, and who has Castiel asked to be his mouthpiece?”

Becky folds her arms over her chest, smolders and seethes while Chuck utters vowels of protest.

“Now stop,” Chuck manages to get out.

Becky steps towards him, falls in file beside him. “Took the words out of my mouth.”

“You’ll be lost for words,” Chuck continues.

But Death laughs. “Prophets don’t have words. They’re like babies in swaddling clothes, taking whatever their fathers and their gods spoon-feed them.”

Becky huffs out a breath.

“Mind your tongue, sir,” Chuck says, stiffly, “or lose it.”

Death slurps on a coke that Adam hands him. “Funny. Coming from someone who will never find his again.”

“Shouldn’t you go and reap something,” Chuck says. “Instead of charading about as a troupe of actors.”

Death spreads his hands, and the suspender straps strains, threadbare, against the swell of his shoulder. “We are simply following your lead.”

“What?” Becky says, voice sharp.

“Players. On a stage. I believe Shakespeare said it best. Someone is always watching. The eyes of god. The amoeba beneath your shoe perhaps.” He rolls his eyes, getting bored now. “People want a show. Apocalypse – show. Watch me, father, watch me throw my temper tantrum and come. Godhood—watch me, come and get me, put me in my place, father.”  He dips his head towards them, thin smile on his face. “And then you record it for all posterity.”

“We are not voyeurs,” Chuck says.

Becky hugs her book closer to her chest. “We’re doers.”

Death chews the end of his straw.

“It might work,” Becky says. “It might make Castiel reconsider godhood. What are you playing?”

“Something that Castiel wants performed so I doubt that it will do just that,” Death says. “And you will just have to wait and see—“ he turns to Chuck – “since the prophet is unseeing.”

Chuck tucks his elbows in upon himself. “Isn’t she the prophet?”

Death laughs.

“What are we supposed to do?” Chuck says, shoulders slumping.

“Relax. Stop questioning. And write. It is what you do best.”

“We don’t know what’s going on,” Chuck says. “Everything is topsy-turvy. We don’t know how to—“ he bites on his lip even as he says it – “how to act.”

“We only know what we’re told,” Becky says. “And we don’t even know if it’s true.”

“What do you assume is true,” Death says.

Chuck and Becky speak at the same time—

“Nothing.”

“That Castiel is transformed.”

They look at each other. Becky says, “Really?”

Death laughs. “Enjoy,” he says, leaving them and his retinue of players behind.

Adam comes toward them, long arms swinging by his side, still not wearing a shirt over his binder. Beside Becky, Chuck folds his arms over himself, pulls his bathrobe tighter.

“John Winchester thinks Castiel is in love with Dean.” Adam gives a cheeky grin to Chuck’s agape mouth, leaves.

“Well, duh,” Becky says.

Chuck stares at her.

“It's obvious," Becky says. 

Chuck blinks his eyes, shakes his head

“This is a dream,” Chuck says flatly. “I am a man who drinks too much dreaming he’s a prophet of the lord or possibly a god and that people write fanfiction of my gospel truths.”

Becky looms in close to his personal space, flings her arms out wide and cries out, “It’s all real, Chuck!”

“Foul! Parallel dialogue is below the belt.”

“In your dreams,” Becky says, winking. “Still, unrequited passion. It makes sense.” She holds up her fists, a coin winking between her knuckles. “Need against need. Need driving need. Need consuming need.”

Chuck buries his head in his palms, scrubs his beard. “Will somebody think of the future? The future that contains the apocalypse? The future that might no longer be ours to have all the time? The future that ruins the sense that there will ever be a now? Will somebody remember?”

Becky chews her fingernails, glances down at the book in her arms. “Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead? In a coffin? Under the ground. Or salted and burned?”

“No. I don’t. I really, really don’t,” Chuck says.

“I used to be depressed by it,” Becky says. “But why bother? It’s not like you’d know. Not like you’d have the self-awareness to scream into the abyss, that no, this was not how you wanted the story of your life to go.” She falls to the floor, curls her feet in close, knees spread-eagled holding up the open book with her name. She drags her fingers down the page, caressing the words. “Don’t you feel you’ve stuffed people into boxes, Chuck?”

“People like who?” Chuck’s voice is sharp.

“Lisa. Amelia. Ruby. Lilith. Eve. Bela. So many, Chuck, have you ever even read your books?”

Chuck grunts, non-committedly.

“Do you ever ask them,  _would you rather be alive or dead_? Is that why some survive even as you drag a pink nub of erasure over them and why some are just dead, dead as dead, as a dead doornail? Do you think the ones who choose life think that life in a box is better than no life at all? Do you think they think they still have a chance? That they lie there thinking—well, at least I’m not dead! That they think someone is going to bang on their coffin lid and tell them to come out.” She straightens. “Hey you,” she shouts. “Come on out of there! You’ve got a story to live!”

“I am not a god,” Chuck says, voice ragged and harsh in his throat. “I’m just the messenger. It’s not my fault, stop blaming me.” He rounds on Becky. “You pound on lids all by yourself, no help needed from me. I’ve read the things on your account, don’t think I haven’t. It never actually happened, you know. Anna never grips Bela tight and raises her from perdition. That’s fanfiction.”

They breathe harshly. Becky seethes. “So you’re suddenly a prophet now?”

Chuck’s mouth drops. “I don’t know. But I’m not naive. I know what I wrote. I know what’s in the canon. And I know that that’s not it.” He cradles his forehead in his palms, swears softly.

“I wouldn’t think about it if I were you. You’d only get depressed.” Becky glares at Chuck’s thin slippers, at the way his socks rumple around his ankles. “I reject your canon and substitute my own.”

They hear shouting—one the voice of god, the other the voice of man. The floor shudders underneath the stomp of combat boots, and Dean Winchester barrels through the door, Castiel following, Sam trailing behind them both.

“You are off the deep end, Cas,” Dean says. “You’re going Old Testament, fire and brimstone.”

“Justice,’ Castiel says, eyes narrowing.

“Murder.”

Castiel tilts their head, looks straight at Dean until he turns away. “As you have murdered and sent so many souls to purgatory, waiting sacrifices for me?”

Dean turns away, palms his jaw, eyes glassy.

Chuck shuffles closer to Becky, and they both rise. They both watch.

“It’s not like that.” Dean straightens. “You’re no better than them. You’re a monster.”

“We don’t think that,” Sam says, hurriedly, despite Dean’s fuck-you face. “We still think you’re one of us. Just. Mistaken.”

Something cold and shadowy falls over Castiel’s face. They draw themselves up, their hands are stiff in their pockets. “No. I am just. I am merciful. I forgive those who deserve forgiveness. I aid the weary. I help those in need. I saved the world first from the apocalypse and then from the apocalypse again and now I am making it beautiful and I will cleanse it and baptize it. Why don’t understand?”

“Why don’t you?” Dean says. “You’re not really Cas. Not really. Not anymore.”

“Leave,” Castiel says.

There is a terrible moment of silence, and then Dean scoffs, shadows his eyes with his hands, and departs with Sam, who looks once back at Castiel, but they have already disappeared without even a whisper to betray their absence.

Becky and Chuck glance at each other.

Death steps from the shadows, slow clapping.

“That was horrible,” Chuck says. “What a terrible ending.”

“You call that an ending?” Death says. “With everybody still alive and kicking however feebly?” He slides Chuck a disappointed sort of smile. “Have things gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they can reasonably get?”

“Of course they have,” Chuck snaps just as Becky shakes her head.

“You lack imagination,” Death says.

“So, who decides how far things go then, huh?” Chuck says. “God? Man? The Devil?”

Death looms in close to Chuck, shadow a vulture on the wall. “ _Decides_? It is written. Have you written anything lately, Chuck?”

He blanches, hunches his shoulders.

“There is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is tragedy. That is life.”

Becky scrambles to her feet. “Fate can shove it,” she says.

Chuck rounds on Death, finger pointing, shivering. “What do you know about anything? You just go around—taunting me. What do you actually know?”

Death lifts his lip around the straw he’s chewing. “I’ve been around since before you.” He looks close at Chuck. “Don’t you remember?”

Chuck shakes in his slippers and his bat robe. “Stop. I’m just a man.”

“Or a prophet,” Bucky says.

Death says nothing, shakes his head, self-satisfied smile hovering around his lips.

“Don’t think I don’t see that,” Chuck says. “Like you’ve room! Death is so far from this plane of reality, it’s ridiculous.” He huffs, pulls his shoulders in, his robe closer to him. “How many times have Sam and Dean died? How many times has Castiel died? How many times will they die?” He gets right into Death’s face. “That isn’t death! It’s the mechanics of cheap melodrama.” He pokes Death in the chest. “I never used to indulge in that when I just wrote pulp fiction novels pre-Supernatural days! But now it’s all death defying prophecies and divine retcon!”

“Are you sure that’s all you write?”

Becky unwraps a piece of gum, sticks it in her mouth. “Besides, there really is no such thing as just a pulp fiction novel,” Becky says, popping it. “All the words are important.”

“Will you not do that in front of the angels?” Chuck hisses.

Becky shrugs, pops it a little louder. “Why should I care what they think?”

Death’s face wrinkles up into a sly smile, while Chuck covers his face in his palms.

“We’re all going to die—and we’re never going to come back,” Chuck says.

Becky’s face is tight, no hint of a smile, hands still at her thighs.

“That is the fate of those with souls,” Death says. “See you at the show.”

And then he is gone, leaving Chuck and Becky alone, so they make their way into their rooms. Chuck follows Becky into hers, and they flop on the bed together, bouncing a little off the mattress. Becky lifts up her shirt, unclasps her gel cups, pulls them off, puts them in the bedside drawer, then flings her arm over her eyes. “What a day.” Her sigh blows her hair from her face.

Chuck groans, and muffles his face with a pillow when the air shifts and Michael and Raphael stand before them.

“Castiel has killed John Winchester.”

“And many more besides,” Michael says. “Including some of our own for blasphemy.”

“Disobedience.”

“Cruelty.”

Becky and Chuck glance at each other.

“Go to Castiel,” Raphael says. “Tell Castiel to stop. There need be no more of this.”

They flutter off with a soft whisper of wings. 

“For a god,” Becky says, “Castiel fails at the omni-present part. Why do we always have to do the seeking?”

Chuck shakes his head, pushes Becky off the bed. “Get up. We have work to do. Have to talk down a deity. Remember when I just wanted to write at night?”

Becky reaches into her drawer, puts on the cups, pulls her shirt down again. “Cleavage good?” Glances in the mirror, pulling her shirt close to her body.

Chuck gives her a thumbs up, and they let the door swing shut behind them.

“I don’t understand why Castiel killed John Winchester,” Chuck says. “It shouldn’t have happened that way.” He frowns, rubs his knuckles over his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m pretty sure that it shouldn’t have happened like that.”

Becky snorts. “I can understand why Castiel would want to kill John Winchester. I just don’t understand why they followed through. Dean loves his father, and Dean will never forgive this.”

“Does a god need forgiveness,” Chuck says.

“Everyone does.”

They wander the halls seeking for Castiel. They see no one but the angels lurking in the shadows with the demons.

“I’m tired of looking,” Becky says. “My feet hurt. I’m tired from driving all day. I just want to go home.”

“Well, what do you suggest then?”

“Give them a shout?” Becky says.

“You mean prayer?” Chuck says. “When has God ever listened to prayer?”

They find themselves in a room, a new room, small, plain. Castiel sits on a plain chair, and Dean stands above them, hands clenched, muscles coiled to strike, but doesn’t.  

“He tried to kill me, Dean. That is the one thing that I won’t bear. I have died many times for you, Dean. I will not be killed save on my own terms.”

Dean’s mouth turns into a sneer. “He’s a hunter. It’s what he does. Hunts things. Saves people. The family business.”

“I am none of those things your father hunted,” Castiel says.

Dean turns away, folded over in broken laughter, before slamming his fist into Castiel’s jaw.

They do not blink, they do not flinch or palm the area, seeking to smooth away the hurt of it. “I forgive you for that,” Castiel says.

“I don’t want your forgiveness,” Dean says. “I don’t want your mercy—“ he pulls off his shirt, revealing the dark circle of his tattoo, the two half-moon scars across his chest. “I don’t want anything from you.” He tears off his pants and his boots and his underwear until there’s nothing but thick dark pubic hair covering his mound, walks naked from Castiel.

Castiel bows their head after Dean has left their presence.

They are old. Weary.

Ancient.

They are like God, and Becky’s heart thumps, panicky, against her chest, her blood freezing, goosebumps prickling along the nape of her neck and in the hollow of her spine.

“You must stop this,” Chuck says.

“You must get rid of the souls,” Becky says. “They’re not yours. Not yours to use.”

Castiel raises their hand. “Silence. You are my Father’s voices. You don’t speak to me. You don’t speak for me.” And disappears.

They exchange glances with each other. “That went well.”  They pat themselves down, feel their hearts rabitting beneath their palms. “We’re still alive.”

Michael and Raphael appear behind them.

“You’ve failed,” Raphael says.

Becky and Chuck exchange glances again. “What did you expect of us? We’re only human.”

Michael leans in close, licks their lips. “Are you? Or aren’t you more?”

“We can’t force a god,” Chuck says. “That’s not how it works.”

Raphael turns to Chuck. “Is our father dead?”

Chuck spreads his hands, shrugs. He doesn’t know.

“You write what is to be and it becomes,” Raphael says. “Write then a new ending where Castiel is no more. End their story now.”

Chuck’s mouth opens, gapes. “What?”

“Do what you do best—write,” says Raphael. “Bring an end to this. Put the story back on track as it should have been.”

“Why don’t you do it then,” Becky says. “Write your own stories. Instead of doing what someone says. Instead of having someone else do it for you. If you don’t like what’s going on, just write your own.”

“Like you?” Michael says, “Samlicker81?”

“Yeah,” she says, shifting the book in her arms so it won’t dig at the fleshy undersides of her elbows.

Raphael tilts their head. “I’ve read your work. You should know that the one named Bela Talbot still suffers in hell.”

Becky flinches, looks at her toes.

“It’s not real, Becky.”

“Fuck you,” she says. “Fuck you all. And shut up. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go home. And I want to lock myself in my room. And write about how it should have gone.”

“You have our leave to go.”

“Come on, Becky,” Chuck says, tugging her by the hand. “Let’s go home.”

Darkness descends upon them so quickly Becky barely has time to wonder whether it is the hand of god pressing down upon them.

They’re standing, although Becky’s version is blurry. She tries to blink the fog away, mumbles, “What. What’s going on? What are we doing?”

Chuck’s voice is dry and just a little bit flat. “Give us this day our daily cue.”

She tries to stamp her feet, fails. “We are not in a script, Chuck.”

“Team Free Will,” he says. “Yes. I get it.”

They’re silent. Becky still has trouble seeing, though she feels a weight around her neck, her wrists and hands strangely numb.

“Don’t you ever wish, Becky,” Chuck says, “that you had written anything original. Instead of just silly fan-fiction?”

She coughs, huffs, seethes. “I have written original things. Besides, just because it’s fanfiction doesn’t mean it’s not original. If it wasn’t original, you would have written, wouldn’t you have?”

“Team Free Will,” Chuck says again, voice dry. “An illusion. A performance. It’s all happened and we just played their parts.”

Becky realizes that there are ropes around her wrist. “What is going on?” she says, her voice high, breaking a little.

“Predestination,” Chuck says. “I must have written this down somewhere. Or maybe I forgot.”

“I’m not going to die now,” Becky says, fighting. “I’m going to get free.”

“Unless they’ve already thought of it.”

“They?” Becky says, voice scathing. “They who?”

“I—?”

“Then I’ll come back.”

“Unless they—unless I—unless that’s what supposed to happen.”

Becky jerks. “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”  It’s a little hard to breathe, so she says, steadily, “I care, but it’s the sort of care where if I care too much I’ll just realize how futile everything is. So I draw a line, and for the record, I do what I think is right because I think it, not because someone said so. I write my own stories.”

She realizes that her hands have been bound in front of her around the book stamped with her name. It digs into her ribs, pressed so tight against her chest from her bonds.

“You think,” Chuck says.

A sun comes up. They are standing together underneath an old tree bereft of leaves. Nooses are slung around their necks. They stand upon a wooden platform and Becky sees the trap doors beneath their feet.

She swallows hard.

“What I don’t understand is,” Chuck says, voice calm like before a storm, “is why.”

“Whoever would have thought that we were so important?”

“It would be better if I knew why. I could accept it if I understood.”

“We wouldn’t even know if it was true,” Becky says. She plays with the platform with the toe of her shoe. “We’ve done nothing wrong, have we?”

Chuck says nothing. The wind ruffles their hair. Becky wonders who will open the doors beneath them.

If it will happen quickly, painlessly.

“There must have been a moment at the beginning where we could have said—no. But we missed it.”

“We’re not dead yet.” Becky glances at the book in her hands. The book with her name. She lowers her head, tries to press it through the tight circle of her bound hands with her chin. It moves a little bit. “We can still say no.”

“Becky? Who is the prophet? I have to know. Is it me, or was it you? Or neither of us?”

The book crashes to the floor at Becky’s feet. She plays with it, makes it so that it straddles the trap door, the edges on firm wood. She climbs up onto the book and, now that the pressure has eased off her neck, she realizes that she can read it, pieces her original work when she was still in college before the late nights, before self-doubt.

“Maybe we’re both prophets. Maybe we both wrote fanfiction of god’s vision. After all, it’s not like you yourself included all the facts, right? Made it prettier. More palatable.” Becky wriggles her hands out of the knot. It burns her skin, rubs the flesh until it begins to seep blood. But she doesn’t stop.

“I thought I was god,” Chuck says, glumly.  “Even when I knew I was a prophet, I thought there was a chance, somewhere, that I was god.” Suddenly, he laughs. “The relief of not being one. Of not being responsible for all that.”

Becky slips her head out of the noose. Goes to Chuck and unties his, then picks up her book, hugs it to her chest.

They jump down from the platform, and walk away from the lone tree eastwards, towards a grey-gold sunrise, fog lingering at their feet and curling around their ankles.

“Hey, Chuck,” Becky says.

“Yeah?”

“Would you be my prophet?”

“I make a lousy prophet, Becky.”

“I don’t think you did. I loved your work,” she says, simply.

He brings her hand to his lips, kisses it, and they stop in the field. She cradles his face even though his beard tickles his palm, tilts his head downwards until she presses her own kiss there on his forehead.

They smile at each other, take each other’s hands again, swinging in time with their steps. “It’s a wonderful universe,” Becky says, nodding at the book in her arms. “Full of adventure and bravery –“

Her voice is lost as they continue to travel east, towards the ribbon of blue sky and a rising sun.


End file.
